‘You have to go,’ says Felix gently to Tonya and Josh. ‘But don’t worry. The moment your parents turn up, we’ll let you know.’
‘We promise,’ I say to them.
‘Woof,’ says Jumble, which means he absolutely guarantees we will.
Josh and Tonya don’t look happy.
I understand why.
There are hundreds of people wandering around these tents, mostly hoping family members will turn up. But not all of them will. Not with so many poor burnt bodies all over the district.
I don’t know what else to say to Tonya, so I just give her a hug.
‘Tonya,’ yells a voice.
I feel her go stiff and tense.
‘Daddy!’ she screams.
She flings herself at an ash-covered man and I recognise what’s left of his Carmody’s Pest Removal T-shirt. And the one his wife is wearing as she drops to her knees to hug Josh.
‘Oh love,’ says Mrs Carmody to him tearfully. ‘When we heard you weren’t on the evacuation bus, we thought you were …’ She stops and stares at Josh’s bandages in alarm. ‘What happened to your chest?’
Josh points to me and Felix.
‘Her grandad is a surgeon and he saved my life.’
Felix gives my hand a little squeeze. I give him one back. We’ve decided it’s probably better if Josh and his family don’t know that an eleven year old operated on him.
‘Felix was brilliant,’ I say. ‘He inserted a drain tube between Josh’s fifth and sixth ribs and straight through his intercostal muscles into his pleural cavity to relieve the pressure of the fluid.’
I think I’ve got that right. I made Felix tell me so I’ll know the details if I ever have to do it again.
Mr and Mrs Carmody thank Felix and tell him what a hero he is.
Felix shakes his head.
‘You’re very kind,’ he says. ‘But no.’
He looks at the dazed and exhausted people around us. Firefighters helping each other with their burns. Family members crying together. Friends and neighbours with their arms round each other. Scared, bewildered people on their own. Strangers comforting other strangers.
Suddenly I realise what all these people are.
Survivors.
Felix goes over and speaks to a weary-looking man in a sooty firefighter’s shirt.
It’s the fire chief from the bushfire command centre. Felix looks like he’s apologising about something. The fire chief stares at him for a long moment. Then he shakes Felix’s hand.
Felix comes back over.
‘Sometimes we get things wrong,’ he says to Mr and Mrs Carmody. ‘But we do our best.’
He puts his arm round me.
‘I learned that from my granddaughter,’ he says. ‘Who did her best for Josh.’
Mr and Mrs Carmody look at me gratefully.
‘Thank you, love,’ says Mrs Carmody, dabbing her eyes.
‘Good on you, sweetheart,’ says Mr Carmody.
Felix gives me a proud smile.
‘I should have mentioned before,’ he says. ‘Her name’s Zelda.’
Now the ceremony has started and I’m not feeling so sad.
We’ve had some sad visits to some sad graveyards over the past few weeks. The last one was yesterday when I went with Tonya and Josh to say goodbye to three of the kids from my class.
This one feels different.
I can see it’s the same for everybody here. Mum and Dad and Felix’s friends from the Holocaust survivors group.
This is such a good idea of Felix’s. To give Zelda a memorial ceremony in this beautiful graveyard full of ferns that have sprung up since the fire. I think he got the idea when we were searching through the ashes of his bedroom and we made an incredible discovery.
Zelda’s locket had survived.
Felix crouches by Zelda’s memorial headstone and gently places her locket into the earth.
The look on his face is so lovely as he says a few words to her. I’m glad the rest of us are standing back a bit so he can say them in private. When you’ve had a friendship with someone for seventy years, you deserve a quiet moment between the two of you.
Then Felix turns to the rest of us.
‘Would anyone like to say anything?’ he asks.
Several people do.
Dad thanks Zelda for looking after his dad.
Mum thanks Zelda for being such a loving inspiration to our family.
Some of the people from the survivors group say some very kind and grateful things about non-Jewish people like Zelda and Barney and Genia and Gabriek, and all the help they gave to Jewish people who needed it.
Then Felix looks at me.
It’s my turn.
I take a step closer to Zelda’s little headstone.
‘All my life,’ I say to her, ‘I’ve wanted a sister so much. And all along, without knowing, I’ve had one. I’m sorry I took so long to realise it was you.’
I pause. When your sister died seventy years ago, a moment like this is very emotional.
Jumble pauses too. He stops sniffing the ferns and gives me a grateful look. I can see how happy he is about going back to being a dog.
‘You did so much in your life,’ I say to Zelda, ‘and I’m glad we’ve laid you to rest because you deserve it. I’ve hardly started my life, and there’s heaps of things I’m planning to do, and after I’ve done them I can’t wait to come up here and tell you about them.’
I pause again. Felix is gazing at me. His eyes are even softer than usual. He doesn’t say anything because he knows there’s something else I need to say.
‘You always spoke up bravely,’ I say to Zelda. ‘And now I’m going to give it a go.’
I look at Mum and Dad.
I hope this isn’t unfair, because I know they’re not expecting this.
I say it anyway.
‘In our family,’ I say, ‘there’s something we do a lot. The parents always leave the kids. It happened to Felix, it happened to Dad and it happened to me. I think we should stop it.’
Mum and Dad stare at the ground.
Everyone does.
Nobody says anything.
Then Mum puts her arms round me.
‘You’re right,’ she whispers.
Dad hugs me too. He still doesn’t say anything, but he’s looking at me with the same expression Ms Canny gets when you give her an answer she wasn’t expecting and she has to think about it.
I give Mum and Dad a smile, so they can see that speaking up doesn’t mean you stop loving people.
We all gaze at Zelda’s headstone for a while. Jumble gives it a loving lick, and some of the people from the survivors group place small stones on it. Which is so nice of them all, because these are two different ways of saying she’ll never be forgotten.
‘We’re lucky, aren’t we,’ I say to Felix. ‘To have her in our lives.’
Felix puts his arm round me.
‘Very lucky,’ he says. ‘And we’re lucky to have you, Zelda. Your life is going to be very interesting, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it.’
Neither can I.
Suddenly I want to give a last grateful memorial whoop before I get started.
But I wouldn’t do that in a graveyard.
Not even once.
Not even if I had written permission, not even then.
Oops, I’m doing it.
‘Good one,’ says Felix. ‘Five out of five.’
I can tell from his face he’d like to do that himself one day. He holds my hand and gazes up at the clear blue sky.
Suddenly I know what’s going to happen next.
Felix has decided not to wait. He’s going to do a big joyful whoop himself.
And he does.
Now.
Dear Reader
Now is the third book about Felix.
In Once and Then, Felix is a ten-year-old struggling to survive in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1942. He and his dearest friend, six-year-old Zelda, are caught up in that terri
ble time we call the Holocaust.
If you haven’t read Once and Then, please don’t worry. I’ve tried to write these stories so they can be read in any order. If you read Now first, you will know some of what happens in Once and Then, but not too much.
I hope that after reading these stories you may want to connect with some of the real voices from the Holocaust. On my website is a list of books that contain some of those voices. I’ve also listed the books I read about the catastrophic Victorian bushfires of February 2009.
I couldn’t have completed this story without expert help. My thanks to Dr Lionel Lubitz for his advice on all things paediatric, and to Danielle Clode and her husband Mike Nicholls for sharing some of their vast bushfire knowledge and expertise. Mike is the volunteer captain of the Panton Hill Fire Brigade in Victoria, and Danielle’s book A Future In Flames (Melbourne University Press, 2010) is a must for anyone who wants to know about bushfires in Australia.
Finally, gratitude beyond words to a special group of people. Some work for Penguin Books, others are close to me in other ways. They’re a kind of extended family for Felix and the two Zeldas. No author gets things right all the time, and these fine aunts and uncles make sure no harm comes to my young characters if ever my judgement lapses. I’m lucky to have them.
Morris Gleitzman
May 2010
www. morrisgleitzman.com
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2010
Text copyright © Creative Input Pty Ltd, 2010
Inside cover illustration copyright © David Follet 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
ISBN: 978-1-74-253055-0
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